Abuja – The UN Development Programme (UNDP), on Thursday, inaugurated the Livelihoods and Economic Recovery Assessment Report aimed at strengthening response to the humanitarian crisis in North East Nigeria.
The Acting Resident Representative of UNDP, Pa-Lamin Beyai, at the inauguration in Abuja, said immediate response was needed to save the lives and property of the people.
“We all know the extent to which insurgency has affected the region.
“No fewer than two million people, that is more than 330,000 households, have been displaced; people’s livelihoods have been disrupted and property damaged”, Beyai said.
According to him, when a community or country is hit with a crisis, immediate response is required to save lives.
“Affected communities would usually lose their property and their livelihoods disrupted. This is what has happened to the North East, especially in Borno.
“For people hit with a crisis to move from humanitarian relief to self-sustaining development, a set of programmatic actions focusing on long-term conditions of victims should be taken into account.”
Beyai decried the humanitarian situation, saying the condition of the people was dire.
The UNDP official emphasised early response for recovery and re-building community capacity in the midst of a crisis.
He said the approach would avoid dependency, increase the resilience of affected communities, and look to solve long standing problems.
Beyai said UNDP conducted a livelihood assessment with the aim of gaining systematic and representative information on the socioeconomic situation of the local population affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.
He said the assessment was also to get informed information on the socioeconomic situation of returnees and the Internally Displaced Persons settled in host communities.
“This has given us an impression of the conditions of the affected populations in Adamawa, Borno, Gombe and Yobe states.
“The assessment revealed the complexities of the hyper local context of each of the eight Local Government Areas and the 24 assessed wards.
“It also revealed the impact of the conflict for the livelihoods of urban and rural households in the region”, he said.
According to him, the assessment report also demonstrated the diversity of the socio-economic conditions, their coping strategies, as well as the needs and context specific priorities of households.
Director-General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Malam Muhammad Sidi, commended the development partners and donor agencies for their response to the humanitarian crisis in region.
“Many of the IDPs have left their communities but now want to return home but to what do they return?
“With the support of the international community, we want the people to return where and when it is safe and in a dignified manner.
“People don’t want to be fed three times a day in camps but want to be empowered and self reliant”, Sidi, represented by Mr Kayode Fagbemi, NEMA’s Deputy Director, Planning, Research and Forecasting, said.
He added that the report would help to identify areas “where we can support so as to address the root causes of the insurgency.
“We need to empower the people of the Lake Chad Basin who are being challenged by the impacts of the climate change and we want to really support the people.
“In so doing, in the next 10 years, we won’t have a repeat of this kind of insurgency”, he said. (NAN)